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It helps to remember that the decisions for what features get made lie in the hands of Product and Design, so if it flops it's their problem~
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May 24, 2017 18:30
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CPColin posted:The best is when you release a widely anticipated feature and get all excited for the positive feedback to start rolling in and the customer just goes, "meh." Never quite learned my lesson on that one. Yeah, it's always a little offputting when you finally ship a feature that people have been regularly asking for for years and the only reaction you get is people no longer complain about it not being there. The upside is that sometimes 6 months later you'll hear that it was the most amazing thing ever and you didn't hear anything at the time because they were busy actually using the awesome new thing rather than talking about how excited they are to maybe be able to use it in the future.
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May 24, 2017 18:44
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CPColin posted:The best is when you release a widely anticipated feature and get all excited for the positive feedback to start rolling in and the customer just goes, "meh." Never quite learned my lesson on that one. ...then you go implement the feature equivalent of baking a poo poo pie for somebody and you win a trophy.
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May 24, 2017 18:52
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Yep. Worked hard for months making the desperately needed feature ultra-robust? "Meh." poo poo out a quick fix at 4:35 on Friday? "OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST!"
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May 24, 2017 19:01
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:...then you go implement the feature equivalent of baking a poo poo pie for somebody and you win a trophy. That was me putting a bookmark button on our portal. Reduced help desk tickets for that issue by 70%.
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May 24, 2017 19:06
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Plorkyeran posted:Yeah, it's always a little offputting when you finally ship a feature that people have been regularly asking for for years and the only reaction you get is people no longer complain about it not being there. This kind of thing happens all the time - also when some customer throws a pissfit every week for a feature to be delivered and when you do they don't actually use it for 3 months or they haven't even gone live on their end yet so the urgency ended up being completely artificial. I've learned to focus on internal sources of satisfaction rather than external. Customers are going to gently caress up, they're going to delay, and they're going to generally not appreciate your work, particularly in proportion to your effort. They're certainly not going to appreciate important yet not-flashy things like validation, robustness, and infrastructure improvements. They're certainly not going to notice when you pay down a piece of technical debt. Most of the time the best you get is a reduction in the number of support tickets. But dammit, when I track down and fix a bug that has caused small but significant inaccuracies in our reporting that have existed for years, or if I make it easier to add new hardware integrations to our SAAS offering, I'm goddamn proud of myself and I don't need <Random CTO for Douchebag Customer #7281> to tell me that I'm doing a good job.
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May 24, 2017 19:27
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Always love it when really basic and easy tasks that should be quick get blocked because I need important info from people who won't respond on slack, and then I get nasty looks from manager-types when I move to one of the reading chairs to work through my programming books. Reaaaaaaally great.
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May 24, 2017 20:20
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Pollyanna posted:Always love it when really basic and easy tasks that should be quick get blocked because I need important info from people who won't respond on slack, and then I get nasty looks from manager-types when I move to one of the reading chairs to work through my programming books. Reaaaaaaally great. lol im about to fire you
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May 24, 2017 20:29
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KoRMaK posted:lol im about to fire you I'll get you next time, Capitalism Man! 
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May 24, 2017 20:33
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CPColin posted:Yep. Worked hard for months making the desperately needed feature ultra-robust? "Meh." poo poo out a quick fix at 4:35 on Friday? "OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST!" I've gotten more praise here for a one line bash script that pipes ls -v into cp than I have for two years of trying to overhaul the entire stack while also shipping new features with a team of fresh graduates. One day I'll figure out how to have internal validation.
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May 24, 2017 21:02
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Rubellavator posted:That was me putting a bookmark button on our portal. Reduced help desk tickets for that issue by 70%. Same, but with a print button. "Can't they just hit Ctrl-P?" "No."
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May 24, 2017 21:16
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CPColin posted:The best is when you release a widely anticipated feature and get all excited for the positive feedback to start rolling in and the customer just goes, "meh." Never quite learned my lesson on that one. Complete silence is the best feedback to get, really.
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May 24, 2017 21:16
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Complete silence means that you solved their problem so well that they don't even remember there was ever a problem.
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May 24, 2017 21:36
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Pollyanna posted:It helps to remember that the decisions for what features get made lie in the hands of Product and Design, so if it flops it's their problem~
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May 24, 2017 22:40
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Bongo Bill posted:Complete silence means that you solved their problem so well that they don't even remember there was ever a problem. Or nobody ever used it because the people defining the project have no idea what the end users are actually doing.
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May 24, 2017 22:53
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lifg posted:Same, but with a print button. I once was asked to add a clock to an "app" that was actually a full-screen (but not kisok mode) web page. I pointed out that there was already a clock on-screen at all times from the OS. I was told to do it anyway. I put the in-app clock literally directly above the Windows task bar clock in the same size and font (machines were all standardized and locked down, so they couldn't move / remove it) and got heaps of praise and great feedback that everyone loved it. 
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May 25, 2017 17:07
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Lumpy posted:I once was asked to add a clock to an "app" that was actually a full-screen (but not kisok mode) web page. I pointed out that there was already a clock on-screen at all times from the OS. I was told to do it anyway. I put the in-app clock literally directly above the Windows task bar clock in the same size and font (machines were all standardized and locked down, so they couldn't move / remove it) and got heaps of praise and great feedback that everyone loved it. "Bark like a dog!", but for Enterprise solutions.
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May 25, 2017 17:14
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Lumpy posted:I once was asked to add a clock to an "app" that was actually a full-screen (but not kisok mode) web page. I pointed out that there was already a clock on-screen at all times from the OS. I was told to do it anyway. I put the in-app clock literally directly above the Windows task bar clock in the same size and font (machines were all standardized and locked down, so they couldn't move / remove it) and got heaps of praise and great feedback that everyone loved it. I bet they thought the web-page clock was showing server time and were then impressed that the server was perfectly in-sync with their desktop.
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May 25, 2017 17:51
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Mniot posted:I bet they thought the web-page clock was showing server time and were then impressed that the server was perfectly in-sync with their desktop. I bet none of them knew what server time was. Or thought about much of anything. Ever.
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May 25, 2017 19:38
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Going home 3+ hours early because there is literally nothing from me to do after a few hours at work (varying reasons) has become the new normal. It feels really awkward cause a few people in the office have a bunch of work while the rest are twiddling their thumbs - they're godawful at balancing work here and it shows. Plus, I've still got the "rear end in chair for 8 hours or you're fired" mentality going. I just use the time to  . I feel kinda guilty, but I prolly shouldn't.
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May 30, 2017 20:53
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Pollyanna posted:Going home 3+ hours early because there is literally nothing from me to do after a few hours at work (varying reasons) has become the new normal. It feels really awkward cause a few people in the office have a bunch of work while the rest are twiddling their thumbs - they're godawful at balancing work here and it shows. Plus, I've still got the "rear end in chair for 8 hours or you're fired" mentality going. Print up and slowly read up on topics you want to learn. That's what I did for a month. Learned a lot about garbage collection and a little about distributed computing. (Caveat, my contract was not renewed.)
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May 30, 2017 22:09
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lifg posted:Print up and slowly read up on topics you want to learn. That's what I did for a month. Learned a lot about garbage collection and a little about distributed computing. Yeah, it's been split between that and studying up on things I've been putting off. Clojure, Elixir, assembly, game dev, all that. It's nice that I get time to do that, I'm just not very comfortable with it cause it feels dangerous in a way.
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May 30, 2017 22:48
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Pollyanna posted:Yeah, it's been split between that and studying up on things I've been putting off. Clojure, Elixir, assembly, game dev, all that. It's nice that I get time to do that, I'm just not very comfortable with it cause it feels dangerous in a way. Close work laptop and have it displaying on one monitor while your personal laptop sits on top doing your current extra curricular task. That's what I do in this open office hellscape when I have down time.
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May 30, 2017 22:52
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I've always heard ~warnings~ about not working on personal projects or open source on your work laptop because they might claim it. Anyone ever had that bite them in the rear end? I've worked on any huge projects of my own yet but I've always heard this caution.
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May 31, 2017 00:20
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Virigoth posted:I've always heard ~warnings~ about not working on personal projects or open source on your work laptop because they might claim it. Anyone ever had that bite them in the rear end? I've worked on any huge projects of my own yet but I've always heard this caution. Depends entirely on the company and your position/value. Check with your manager about general policies and follow them. If you contributed to something that became worth serious money, it may not matter though because your company's lawyers will have increasing incentives to take action if they think they might be able to finagle a settlement. Get a lawyer immediately when it comes to IP that you aren't going to just hand over, but make sure it's worth it because you're not likely to be retaining your employment .
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May 31, 2017 01:29
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Gildiss posted:Close work laptop and have it displaying on one monitor while your personal laptop sits on top doing your current extra curricular task. That's what I do in this open office hellscape when I have down time. We have sitting chairs on the outer rim of the open office, so I just sit there and get work done. We're technically not allowed to sit there - they along with the water, the meeting rooms, and the booted VP's office are "guests (suits) only" - but we do it anyway. I'm beginning to think this is all a very slow-acting burnout. I was under the impression that burnout was just a symptom of overworking, but it's clearly much more complicated. Can you burn out from poorly-meted out and uninteresting work? Can a lack of work burn you out?
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May 31, 2017 15:16
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Pollyanna posted:I'm beginning to think this is all a very slow-acting burnout. I was under the impression that burnout was just a symptom of overworking, but it's clearly much more complicated. Can you burn out from poorly-meted out and uninteresting work? Can a lack of work burn you out? I don't think I'd call that 'burnout' in the same way a death march is burnout, but anything that makes you dread going to work is bad for you and means you need to move on.
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May 31, 2017 15:45
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Pollyanna posted:We have sitting chairs on the outer rim of the open office, so I just sit there and get work done. We're technically not allowed to sit there - they along with the water, the meeting rooms, and the booted VP's office are "guests (suits) only" - but we do it anyway. You are burned out of the ability to deal with the environment, not from coding too much. Either way, you are fed up and unable to put up with things as they are, and this will bleed out and kill any sort of enthusiasm in your life.
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May 31, 2017 15:51
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It's called bore-out and it's a real thing. I gave up a 10 minute walking commute because of it.
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May 31, 2017 15:55
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Pollyanna posted:We have sitting chairs on the outer rim of the open office, so I just sit there and get work done. We're technically not allowed to sit there - they along with the water, the meeting rooms, and the booted VP's office are "guests (suits) only" - but we do it anyway. I read a really good article a year or two ago about this subject and I can't for the life of me find it, but basically there are several types of burnout: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/burnout-comes-in-three-varieties.html I'm not overloaded, but I am firmly in a boredom burnout and worn-out burnout with my current employer.
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May 31, 2017 16:04
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Pollyanna posted:We have sitting chairs on the outer rim of the open office, so I just sit there and get work done. We're technically not allowed to sit there - they along with the water, the meeting rooms, and the booted VP's office are "guests (suits) only" - but we do it anyway. It isn't burn-out precisely but yes it's similar. Believe it or not but a lovely work environment or spending full time working hours somewhere you hate will, in fact, take a toll and burn you out as well even if you aren't being death marched through a ringer. It sounds like that's what happening; the environment is loving you up.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:06
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My wife spent a year at a job where she basically spent 75% of every week reading Facebook. She'd literally ask her boss if there was anything at all to do and he'd just be like "nah". She was ready to jump off a bridge and ended up moving on to a different job. Bore-out is definitely a thing that can take a real toll on you.
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Jun 1, 2017 15:13
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The worst part is, it makes the next job harder too. Like, I started getting into bore-out at my previous job, and lemme tell you when I started here it took a concerted effort to not just read SA all day err day
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Jun 1, 2017 15:17
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ChickenWing posted:The worst part is, it makes the next job harder too. Yep. Spent a year on the bench at a consulting firm years ago. Had specialized skill set they didn't want to use me for anything but that. 6 months of directed learning, making a home lab doing everything possible. Followed by 6 months of dropping gf at work going to the gym then playing Everquest for 6 hours. Worse part was getting the paycheck and seeing the year to date and how much money I made doing literally nothing. Destroyed my work ethic for a time to come.
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Jun 1, 2017 15:38
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I'd kill for that kind of workload right now. I'm sort of mulling over a slow shift from the ops side of the house to a more data science-oriented development role -- recommender systems and the like -- and it's really hard to get any learning done on my own time with two young kids and a fairly intense startup job. Grass is always greener, and all that.
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Jun 1, 2017 15:54
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Plorkyeran posted:Yeah, it's always a little offputting when you finally ship a feature that people have been regularly asking for for years and the only reaction you get is people no longer complain about it not being there. Do none of you have telemetry or regular customer sync-ups
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Jun 1, 2017 16:26
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I swear to loving god a QA team/process is not a substitute for actual unit and feature tests. We keep getting bugs that QA kicks back to us after like two weeks' worth of work and silence because there's a really stupid and obvious bug that would have been caught with a modicum of automated testing. The problem is that the developers for some stupid reason don't own the automated testing, so we don't get the opportunity to write feature tests for ourselves and thereby catch stupid poo poo early.  I am sick and loving tired of everything being buggy as hell and this organization being way too slow and stupid to improve itself.
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Jun 2, 2017 14:17
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I was going to ask in what ridiculous universe you live in where devs aren't responsible for unit tests, but then I remembered every single other post you've made about your current job and realized that was a silly question. work on that yo
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Jun 2, 2017 14:24
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ChickenWing posted:I was going to ask in what ridiculous universe you live in where devs aren't responsible for unit tests, but then I remembered every single other post you've made about your current job and realized that was a silly question. Currently ongoing. Still on the "find places and do their phone screens" stage. I'm actually having trouble finding jobs to apply to, or at least ones that I like - I mostly rely on AngelList and StackOverflow, and tips from personal contacts. It's certainly nothing like the "OH MY GOD THERE'S A HUGE DELUGE OF ENGINEERING NEEDS EVERYWHERE!!!" thing that everyone claims, but maybe that's just my pickiness.
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Jun 2, 2017 14:48
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If there's a deluge of need there's also a deluge of lovely places to work. This is a very picky industry from the other side as well, even the lovely places think they're el goog.
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Jun 2, 2017 14:52
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